The school is shut, will your kid actually do any work set?

Mine will, he should be sitting GCSE's in about 6 weeks time, I'm not saying he will have his head down 8.30-3.30 but he will get it done & I may ask his maths tutor to do a double session each week while he is off to push his grade up abit further hopefully.

Why would I make them? As long as they can read and write and do basic sums, the rest if the stuff is completely useless. At least until the exam years.

If the schools shut I'd congratulate my children on their freedom from child jail and let them just be kids! Play games, read books, watch Disney. Live.

My eldest is 18 and at college and chose to be there, so it's on him to make sure the work is done. My youngest is year 8, but I'm not 100% convinced he would do it.

I work from home (not self employed) and my wife is able to as well, so we'll be expected to put in a normal work day. We won't be able to be chase him throughout the day as we've got to do a solid days work.

Schools will need to realise this and I would hope they do, as I'm sure many parents will be in this situation.

Just as a kind of thought experiment noblegiraffe imagine, in a class of 30, 10 do well because they or their parents have the right temperament and skills and their resources at home are sufficient and 10 are in real trouble without the inclination or encouragement to engage with anything productive or with, for example several older family members ill one after another. Maybe the other 10 have a lot of screen time and not much exercise, don’t suffer too much.

How would you ideally want to handle it?

I've been thinking about this since I posted.

At the moment until we hear more, I plan to just concentrate on revision. For a variety of previously listed reasons, realistically having them do school work at home isn't going to work.

Governments can be sly bastards. Wouldn't surprise me if they decide to make up lost time etc in the Summer holidays.

If I was still worked in education I would be questioning exactly what will happen if, for whatever reason, a good proportion of children don't do the work set. We all know how the government likes to fuck over those in education.

DS has quite a diligent group of friends so that should help to motivate him.
We'd probably work out a daily schedule together for schoolwork, music practice, exercise and fun. As long as he has someone (DH or I) sitting in the same room as him (just physically there - don't need to talk or interact) then he'll get on with it.
Or he'll set up a facetime group with his friends so they all work at the same time, like a virtual class.

This is my reality right now. The schools closed here on Sunday night. My Year 6 DS is brilliant and is helping me such a lot with the other 2 as well. My Reception DS is learning through me as the conduit to his teacher. My Year 4 DS is a bigger problem. He's unfamiliar with the Google Classroom software and doesn't have a lot of experience with ipads, so trying to get to grips with both. Meanwhile I'm finding it hard to help him because I'm concentrating on doing work with my 4 year old! All 3 have 2 live streaming sessions a day of an hour, with their teacher that they must check into. It's proving to be really tricky

For an hour a day, I would be questioning is it really worth it? And even with you running yourself down, trying to squeeze it all in, chances are they will 'fall' behind. It's not a criticism about you, you are trying your best in an unworkable situation. There are teachers who shudder at the idea of trying to teach to different age groups at the same time.

Will the school be doing a catch-up thing?

There will be parents with dyslexia/dyscalculia etc themselves. Trying to teach their kids for the remainder of the day will be a nightmare for them all.

Governments can be sly bastards. Wouldn't surprise me if they decide to make up lost time etc in the Summer holidays.

Result!!! School open during the hopefully good weather and me and my wife can take a couple of weeks off teen free!! Winning!!

It's an hour twice a day but yes, the parents are bearing the brunt of it. Especially with the younger kids. And I agree they wont be getting the same level of teaching as they would if they were in school. I just hope this situation doesn't drag on for too long

@allyjay
The first week is by far far the worse especially without planning from the schools. We're 4-5 weeks in here and it does get better. Kids, parents and teachers all get use to the technology, teachers have time to lesson plans for the new environment as opposed to force fitting their current plan into home learning. First week there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, now it's not ideal and indeed boring, but it's manageable and much less stressful.

Thank you @DarkMutterings this is a relief to know. Going a bit crazy here with lack of firm guidance from the school

DS is nearly 4 and we live in a flat with no garden, if we have to self isolate I'm going to make a timetable of nursery like activities (baking, playdough, bit of phonics) to stop us going crazy. We'll do lots of cosmic kids yoga off the tv too, and corridor bowling.

Ds would be doing work with assumption exams will be end of April still.

I'm very concerned. I am a teacher, so at least I'll be at home with them, but I have three children, one is in Year 11. She will get first dibs on the laptop. My boys (age 14 and 6) will want to do nothing except screens. I think I will have to institute a timetable to stop us all from going stir crazy.

Seems highly likely the schools will close soon. Dd is in year 7. Tbh she would be fine doing some online Maths , English and science each day..
I am starting a new job on Monday after 6 months out of work and dh is self employed so we have bigger worries tbh.

School have said they would set work, DD14 would do it, DS11 would need sitting with

Year 10 and I would be very surprised if he did! He'll sleep through a school closure just waking up for food.

my yr 11 and 13 dc would do work as they are very keen to do well in their exams. My Y9 dc would also do a bit of work as she is very academic and has academis ambitions! My Y7 dc would do absolutely bugger all if he could get away with it

My 14 year old would even if left to her own devices, yes. My 12 year old wouldn't of his own accord but is fairly easy going and only needs reminding by WhatsApp to do his homework. He completes short tasks (stand alone homework tasks) without being hovered over but needs reminding to do a bit of longer projects each day.

Eight year old struggles to bring the right books and worksheets home to do his homework but means well... If the work set could be done without workbooks, text books and worksheets he'd left at school he'd do work set. He'd do extra maths - he isn't a maths genius but enjoys mental arithmetic and asks me and his siblings to give him sums to do for fun... Spelling is the opposite though.

So the answer is mostly, they would, after a fashion... The standard might be questionable in some subjects though

Yes they would. My year 9 is taking an IGCSE in April.
My other year 9 would work too.

I work with schools so appreciate that not all will work, have IT equipment or involved parents. I worry about the vulnerable students we have with unstable home lives, school is an escape for them and they dread holidays.

But I dislike the assumption that all kids will be running riot in McDonalds the whole time.

But Matt Hancock was (naively) adamant yesterday there would be no full school closures.

I'm happy to support my D.C. to do any work the school set, however if they need to use a computer I can't see how they will. We've got 1 computer at home which DH uses for work during the day (he works from home). I'm a teacher and not sure how I'm supposed teach remotely without a computer. We don't get one from school, and all my lessons are saved on the school system which can't be accessed remotely.

If this happens my two will be entertaining there self’s whilst I try and work from home as mush as possible! If that means the Nintendo switch is on for two weeks so be it.

As you know, we have a large group of students in self isolation atm, all from years 10 and 11. I am sure most of my top set year 11 are beavering away anyway and see it as time off to revise. the rest of the class think they are lucky. In my other subject , the absent student cannot do her work because it is supervised coursework. the exam board has (twice) not replied to my query about this,

I have no evidence whatsoever that the 12 year 10s have seen the work I set or have done it. The whole class have homework due later : will see whether I get any emailed in from year 10!

As I have (annoyingly) kept mentioning , my main subject cannot effectively be taught remotely (revised for sure : but we haven't finished the course) so my anxiety is mounting.